Elizabeth Sidel and Christopher O’Neill

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CreditCreditPhillip Gabriell Photography

By Rosalie R. Radomsky

April 7, 2013

Acquaintances Are Reunited by Spam

Elizabeth Carrie Sidel and Christopher John O’Neill were married Saturday evening at Brantwyn Mansion on the grounds of the DuPont Country Club in Wilmington, Del. The Rev. Andrew I. Walton, a Presbyterian minister, led a ceremony that incorporated Irish and Jewish influences.

The bride, 42, works part time at PSCI, a technology staffing firm in Wilmington, of which the groom is the chief executive and founder. She is also an independent executive recruiter in Wilmington. Until last year, she worked in Boston as the director of recruiting for the Boston Group at Northwestern Mutual Financial Network, an insurance and financial service firm in Milwaukee. She graduated magna cum laude from Skidmore. She is a daughter of Susan Hollander Sidel and Dr. James S. Sidel of Wellesley, Mass.

The groom, 55, graduated from Villanova and received an M.B.A. from the University of Delaware. He is a son of Geraldine Desmond O’Neill and Eugene B. O’Neill of Wilmington. The groom’s previous marriage ended in divorce.

The couple first met in March 2007 when Ms. Sidel and some of her colleagues ran into Mr. O’Neill on the street in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., as they were all looking for the same conference center. “I was down there for a round table and she was down there for a function with Northwestern Mutual,” he said. “As we were walking we struck up a conversation.”

She had other plans when he asked her to dinner later, but they exchanged business cards and Mr. O’ Neill kept hers as a memento, which he placed on his credenza at work. “I could look down from my computer and see her name once in a while,” he said. They spoke on the telephone a couple of times, but nothing transpired. In June 2010, Ms. Sidel noticed him on LinkedIn.

“Weirdly enough, on his profile it says it was his birthday that day,” Ms. Sidel said. “Oh, wow, this is a sign,” she recalled thinking. “How romantic is this?” She invited him to join her network but he said he saw that as nothing more than a professional invitation. It wasn’t until August 2011 that spam e-mail reconnected them electronically.

“I came to my office,” she said, “and lo and behold, my e-mail was hacked.” Mr. O’Neill, who was among the targets, spotted the spam while going through his messages at work. “When it directed me to a Web site, I deleted it,” he said, but he also saw an upside to it. “I looked at it as an opportunity to reach out.”

He sent her a message alerting her to the spam — and mentioned that he had season tickets to the Philadelphia Phillies. “You should come here for a Sox/Phillies game,” she responded. “We could finally go out for dinner (longtime rain check from Fort Lauderdale).”

They then began sending messages and talking on the phone regularly. “It got really intense,” said Ms. Sidel, who told her mother, “I feel like I have a fake boyfriend.” In September 2011, Mr. O’Neill flew up to Boston for their first date.